Lace on Parade! Plus Bonus Weird Kid Story!

It's finally sunny out, so I could get some pictures of lace out in the wild:

It's Miss Lambert's shawl, off the needles and out in real life.

I also have lace in captivity:




The Bleeding Hearts Stole, complete through the border charts and the transition chart, and into the main body chart. At this point, there's lace patterning on both sides (knitted lace? lace knitting? I can never remember which), so it's a little slower to knit, but the pattern is so geometrical that it's easy to get into the rhythm of things. I'm still enjoying both the yarn and the pattern.

When I was a kid, I remember handing out Valentines to everyone in my class, but I don't remember having big in-class parties planned by and heavily attended by parents. In fact, after about first grade, I don't remember parents coming to anything at school aside from conferences and official school concerts, plays, etc. I thought about this phenomenon this week, when I realized that it was the room parents who had planned Jr. Jr.'s class Valentine's party, and not the teacher. Same for the Halloween party and the end-of-the-year Holiday party as well. I wonder if she thinks it's a big pain that interrupts her teaching time? I'll have to ask her next week at conference time.

Anyway, at these parent-planned parties, "crafts" and games (waste) eat up a large amount of time. One activity the kids had to do at this week's party was make a Valentine. Red and pink paper were handed out, along with the requisite doilies, stickers, ribbons, etc. All the kids dutifully made Valentine's, mostly for their moms, some for their dads, and one intrepid boy made one for one of the girls in the class.

My kid? He made a Valentine for his ear. "Dear ear," it said, "you are the best ear ever." When I asked him why he made one for his ear (didn't the other one get jealous?), as opposed to, say, his mother, he said, "What?? My ear never gets any mail!"